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Archived posts from category ‘Logistics’

One hundred and eighty-five. That’s it. That’s the most Lockheed F-22 Raptor stealth fighters the U.S. Air Force will ever possess after production ended earlier this year. The Air Force actually procured 195 F-22s starting in the mid-1990s, but eight were test models and two operational models have crashed (as has one of the test airframes).

by ROBERT BECKHUSEN In 2008, the Pentagon began investigating whether the main supplier of food to troops in Afghanistan overcharged taxpayers. Since then, there have been audits, recriminations and the discovery that the supplier may have overbilled the military as much as $756.9 million. Now lawmakers are squeezing both the Pentagon and the contractor in [...]

by DAVID AXE Air Force Magazine has identified the previously undisclosed company that uses a single Vietnam-era Caribou airlifter to make daredevil airdrops to the most remote U.S. bases in Afghanistan. It’s Flightworks, Inc.

The Caribou airlifter flies so low through the mountains and valleys of eastern Afghanistan that it’s invisible from the ground … until it’s right on top of you. The Vietnam-era, twin-engine cargo plane with the cranked wings and bulbous nose appears suddenly, racing just a couple hundred feet over the U.S. Army outpost on the outskirts of Marzak, in remote Paktika province. At a precisely timed moment, the Caribou pitches upward. A dozen black plastic pallets tumble from its cargo hold and, parachutes unfurling, drift down onto a snowy field adjacent to the American base. The Caribou, hundreds of pounds lighter, dives for the safety of a nearby valley.

In this video by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Charles Crail, watch a contractor-flown Caribou supply plane — flying low among the mountains — drop pallets on a remote outpost in Paktika province. At the end, listen to the soldier praise the pilots.

A snapshot of supply efforts at one remote coalition outpost in eastern Afghanistan illustrates the war’s daunting logistical challenges and the potential shortfalls once foreign troops withdraw in 2014.

Pakistan is still blockading NATO war supplies passing through the port of Karachi in response to last month’s killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by an alliance air strike. But inside Afghanistan, supply lines are about to get a lot safer for NATO’s logisticians. On Saturday, the Marine Corps flew history’s very first combat resupply mission using a robot helicopter. The unmanned Kaman K-MAX successfully hauled a sling-load of cargo out to an unspecified base, presumably somewhere in southern Afghanistan.

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